Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/84

82 pash letters and sending him checks made out to "Cash" and easy to convert into same?

The nose-dive Anita took after the departure of Gus scared the pants off her. She teamed up with a truck horse called Louella de Long and did a sister act that couldn't ever be mentioned in the same breath with the Cherry Sisters. When Rogers and De Long could get no more bookings, Anita got plastered. When a theatre manager she knew told her the office had black-listed her because of her alcoholic habits, smacko, she sobered up.

Happily her father had died and she could collect enough insurance money to keep her. Happily she was sensible enough to realize that her only chance lay in convincing booking agents not only that she was off the embalming fluid but that she could dance when she was cold sober. Moreover she decided to give Hollywood a trial. The cost of living in movie town was cheap, she had heard, and the best dancing schools on the Coast were to be found not far from Hollywood Boulevard.

When she started to practise in Buddy Nolan's school, she was on the down-beat all right. Gone was the false pep she'd had in the old days. No more parties, no drinks. She was so good she couldn't believe it herself.

When she met Ken, she recalled, she went for him because he was so all-fired clean looking. As always, she hit the bull's-eye, asking him certain personal questions. When he confessed he didn't know the right answers, she decided to mother him. The trouble was, she didn't know her own self well enough. She never dreamed she would fall for him. She hoped, of course, that he would be sensible. His break with Mr. Lowell, his boyish enthusiasm, his fanatical devotion to work, lifted her to new heights. He, the boy,